


Eli, Elijah

by CaptainDemetrios



Series: Cuddle Squad [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Carver is a good templar but Kirkwall sucks, Chantry Bullshit, Circle Abuses, Gen, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Mage Rights, Mages deserve better especially children, Rite of Tranquility, Tranquil Mages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 14:42:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12655590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainDemetrios/pseuds/CaptainDemetrios
Summary: Carver meets a mage whose personality is all too familliar to him





	Eli, Elijah

**Author's Note:**

> Eli is the name of my Hawke

It had been almost two years since Carver Hawke enlisted in the Templar Order. He had taken to it quickly, and he even felt he was starting to really find a place he could have his own identity. But even so, there was something that separated him from the other Templars, something none of them would vocalize. 

 

Carver vocalized it, every time he complained to his superiors about abuses, and was subsequently ignored. And then his rations cut. It never changed him, only quieted him for a while. 

 

It was after one such cut that he met Elijah. 

 

He was young, barely 16, but carried himself with a maturity Carver recognized as being a result of having little other choice. He glared at Carver as soon as he approached and Carver nearly flinched back at the fire there. This boy wasn’t afraid of him, or any Templar. When Carver approached he moved in front of the other apprentices. It made Carver’s heart twist in his chest.

 

“You guys can’t hang out around here. Move on to wherever you’re supposed to be.” Carver said.

 

“We’re just talking,” Elijah argued. The other kids stayed behind him, deferred to him. 

 

“You can talk in the mess, or in the library, or in your rooms, not in the middle of the hallway.” 

 

“Gonna tell us we’re not allowed to breathe to loud next? We’re not doing anything wrong, we’re  _ talking! _ ” Elijah continued. One of the boys behind him tugged at his arm. 

 

“Come on Eli, let’s just go to the mess, you’re gonna get in trouble again…” the boy whispered. 

 

“It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair, we’re barely allowed to exist.” 

 

“Don’t get dramatic,” Carver heard himself say, to someone who wasn’t a 16 year old Circle mage. “I’m not going to get you in trouble, but another templar might, so you need to move along.”

 

“Eli, come on.” 

 

Elijah glared at Carver, examining him.

 

“Fine,” Elijah finally said, and he turned to go. The others followed him, without Elijah having to call for it. 

 

\--------

 

Carver didn’t want to ask about the boy and put him on anyone's radar, so he just looked through the records himself. Elijah had been sent from Ferelden, now that the Circle was running again. Before Ferelden he had been in 3 other Circles, bounced around not for disciplinary reasons, but for reasons out of Elijah’s control, and likely out of his knowledge as well. It reminded Carver of his own moving around, before Kirkwall. 

 

The notes on Elijah’s file said he was argumentative and headstrong, a natural leader, fiercing protective of fellow apprentices- to the point of insubordination. Carver wondered if they kept sending Elijah away to prevent him from growing too attached and too protective. 

 

A crash from the hallway interrupted his study. Carver rushed out and found Elijah and a younger apprentice (Malcolm, Carver noted) standing over a shattered inkwell. The ink splattered the boys’ shoes and robes, filled every crack on the stone tiling below them. Carver took it all in for a long minute before looking back up at the boys. Elijah pushed Malcolm behind him and planted his feet. Carver’s eyes met his and held them, and he knew Elijah was bracing to be struck. Another templar might have done it. 

 

“I did it,” Elijah said. “It wasn’t his fault, he just tried to help me clean up.”

 

Malcolm’s robes were far more splattered than Elijah’s, and if that was not enough evidence, the boy was clinging to Elijah’s arm and trying (failing) not to cry. “He was just helping me clean up. I did it.”

 

“Ok,” Carver nodded. “Mal, go find one of the Tranquil and ask them for a bucket and scrub brushes”

 

“Y-yes s-ser!” Mal squeaked and ran off. Elijah still held Carver’s gaze, frowning thoughtfully.

 

“You called him Mal.” Elijah said

 

“That’s what his friends call him.” Carver shrugged. 

 

“You aren’t his friend.”

 

“He was scared. I wanted to put him at ease.”

 

Elijah didn’t say anything. Carver shifted his feet a little, holding Elijah’s gaze the whole time. He thought again how Elijah seemed far older than 16 years.

 

Malcolm came running back with the bucket and brushes, sloshing water as he bounced. Carver turned away from Elijah to smile at Malcolm. 

 

“Thanks, buddy. I’ll take care of this, why don’t you go get changed into clean robes? If someone stops you, you tell them Carver’s already talked to you and they can find me if they have questions.”

 

“Thank you, ser!” Malcolm hurried away. 

 

“Alright.” Carver sighed and got on his knees, fishing for a brush.

 

“What are you doing?” Elijah stared.

 

“What’s it look like? Cleaning.”

 

“I thought you ere going to make me do it.”

 

“Well, I’m not. Wouldn’t say no to some help, though.”

 

Elijah watched Carver for a minute and then knelt down and took the other brush to help.

 

“You aren’t in trouble, Elijah.” Carver didn’t look up at him as he scrubbed the stone floors.

 

“My friends call me Eli”

 

Carver swallowed. “I know.”

 

“Oh,” he frowned. “I don’t need to be put at ease?”

 

Carver laughed “Do you hear yourself? You don’t need any hand-holding, you’ve got this.” 

 

Elijah’s cheeks grew red and he huffed. It didn’t take long for the two of them to clean up the ink, and Carver swept up the glass.

 

\--------

 

A few months later Carver heard screaming and shouting down the hall. He ran, hand ready on his hilt. There were three other templars already there, a Tranquil mage Carver recognized, and Elijah, tears in his eyes, screaming at the templars. 

 

“ _ You can’t--! You can’t do this! He didn’t want this! You can’t, he didn’t want this! He didn’t deserve this!”  _

 

The templars were trying to drag him from the unmoving Tranquil, but Elijah kicked and thrashed, magic sparking. Carver saw one of the templars dispel and block his magic. Carver let go of his sword and stepped between them all. 

“Hawke--!”

 

“I can handle him. You nullified his magic, he’s not a threat. Let me take him to his room.”

 

“He’s attacking templars. Being contrary.”

 

“He’s upset. He’s a kid, he’s just upset. Let me handle this, come on…”

 

The templar holding Elijah let him go and Elijah tried to take a swing at him. Carver grabbed his wrist before he could.

 

“He’s wearing a helmet, idiot.” He muttered and tugged Elijah away. 

 

“They can’t do this! He didn’t ask for this!  _ It isn’t fair!”  _ Elijah tried to pull away from Carver, tried to kick and hit too- doing little as tears blinded him, and Carver was also in armor. Carver dragged him into a supply closet and held his shoulders to steady him. 

  
“I know. I know, it hurts and you have every right to be upset but you need to calm down.”

  
“It’s not fair!” Elijah cried. “He didn’t deserve that, he didn’t do anything wrong!”

 

“I know,” Carver squeezed his shoulders. “It isn’t fair, you’re right. I’m sorry, Eli, I’m so sorry.”

 

Elijah clung to him and sobbed wordlessly. Carver held him until he calmed down enough to go back to bed. 

 

Carver’s rations were cut again the next day.

 

\-----

 

He knew what would happen as soon as Elijah walked in. Carver knew Elijah well, after 2 years. Carver looked to the other templars, internally, silently, begging them to notice too. Prayong one of them would stop this, delay the Harrowing. 

 

Harrowings were never delayed.

 

Elijah walked in looking like death. 

 

The fire Carver had so admired was gone from Elijah’s eyes, and the maturity that made him seem so strong had vanished. 

 

He was a boy. He was scared. 

 

Carver knew this would be the last time he saw Elijah. 

 

Before they began the ritual Elijah’s eyes met Carver’s and held them, and Carver felt Elijah saying goodbye. Just before he closed his eyes, mind entering the Fade, he no longer looked like the boy Carver had come to know and nurture. He looked like Carver’s brother. 

 

He wasn’t in the Fade long before the demon took over. It was Carver who cut him down, who moved fastest. After all, he had known right away this would happen.  Even as he drove his sword through Elijah’s chest he caught him, and held him close.    
  
“Eli, Maker, I thought…” He whispered and didn’t finish. Cullen pulled Elijah’s limp body from his arms. Carver watched him. He looked even younger now, somehow. 

 

He didn’t want to drink with the other templars tonight. He didn’t think he could stomach it. He patrolled the apprentice halls, numb. Even the mages who trusted him avoided him now. 

 

Carver found Elijah’s bed and sat on it. He had nothing there, barely allowed any belongings. A stack of mystery novels, a poorly sewn pillow clearly meant for practice. Carver turned the pillow over in his hands. 

 

He wondered what the demon offered Elijah that he accepted so quickly. He remembered Elijah’s fondness for his fellow mages, how quickly he jumped to the defense of any of them, and Carver couldn’t believe Elijah would trade his soul for simple power. He couldn’t imagine strong, fearless Elijah would be tempted by the simple, heartbreaking things he had heard the other mages were offered during their Harrowing. So what was it that killed Elijah so quickly? 

 

His fists tightened around the pillow so tight he almost ripped it, as he realized. Kirkwall had beaten Elijah down as much as any other mage. Maybe this was exactly what Elijah had been tempted with.

 

Death by templar wasn’t unusual in Circles, especially not in Kirkwall. Still, it hurt.

 

Malcolm sat next to him, older and more sturdy these days, and gently took the pillow from him, laid it back on the bed.

  
“He’d want the next person to have it, Ser Carver.” Malcolm said gently. “He wouldn’t want you to cry for him.”

  
Carver hadn’t even realized he’d cried and quickly wiped his face. 

 

“I uh…”

  
“Ser Carver?”

 

“Yeah, Mal?”

 

“Can you be there during my Harrowing too? Please?”

 

_ No, I can’t.  _

 

“I’ll try, buddy. Promise.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Please dont forget to comment!


End file.
